1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the area of storage of files, specifically time-based media (multimedia) files, in a tangible medium.
2. Background of the Invention
Prior art multimedia files have suffered from a variety of shortcomings. Manufacturers have tended to develop their own internal file formats unique and optimized to their products. They are often represented in binary. Generally, they are designed to be used by known application programs (their own) for known purposes, those supported by their applications. As a result, such files have suffered not only from incompatibility among each other, but also have suffered from the shortcoming that they are inextensible.
Web browsers have long had the ability to handle data which the underlying browser does not know how to process. Web browsers typically parse HTML and its variants (HTML+) to present web pages to a user and have had facilities implemented for handling disparate file data types in an HTML file through a MIME registry. If a web browser encounters a data type in a HTML file that it is processing that it cannot handle within the browser, then it makes an attempt to find a plug-in or helper application which can process the data outside the domain of the browser.
XML has recently grown into favor for describing data generally which, unlike HTML, is not necessarily to be presented to a user, for example, on a display or on hardcopy. XML, unlike HTML, is extensible and can have user-specified tags asscociated with it. Some multimedia authoring applications (e.g. Final Cut Pro 5 from Apple Computer, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. [hereinafter “Apple”]), have added facilities for basic file interchange using XML. However, to date, no multimedia authoring applications have stored their native file format in XML with the ability to handle a variety of data types, including those of which the application has no ability to process.